1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an internal voltage generation circuit, and more particularly, to an internal voltage generation circuit for generating an internal voltage with a desired level from a power supply voltage.
2. Related Art
An electronic circuit operates with a power supply voltage, and generally generates an internal voltage with a desired level from the power supply voltage. The electronic circuit drives internal circuits using the internal voltage. Specifically, since a semiconductor apparatus of the electronic circuit is very sensitive to a voltage level, the electronic circuit generates internal voltages with various levels from the power supply voltage for various circuitry that requires different voltage levels.
FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating an example of an internal voltage generation circuit according to the known art. In FIG. 1, the internal voltage generation circuit includes a detection unit 10 and a voltage pumping unit 20. The detection unit 10 detects a level of an internal voltage VINT reduced through voltage division and compares it to the voltage reference signal VREF to appropriately generate a pump enable signal PUMPEN. The voltage pumping unit 20 performs charge pumping in response to the pump enable signal PUMPEN to generate the internal voltage VINT. The voltage division is generally performed using a resistor, wherein the resistance of the resistor should not be very large in order to improve a sensing response speed of the detection unit 10. When the resistance of the resistor is set to be very small in order to increase a response speed, since the response speed of the detection unit 10 is too fast, ripples may occur in the internal voltage VINT and the consumption of a current for generating the internal voltage VINT is increased. Accordingly, a trade-off relationship is established between the sensing response speed of the detection unit 10 and the frequency of occurrence of ripples of the internal voltage VINT. Furthermore, using resistors to divide a voltage to generate the internal voltage VINT results in continuous current consumption.